Saturday, October 11, 2014

Mooning about in the Billington's Cove sunshine

Robert was thinking, "lucky day" as he watched his workmates head out to
string the fairy lights for the dance. They had actually drawn straws,
a commodity the hardware store could produce, to see who had ladder
duty that day. The Reading Man was willing for any task that needed
doing and was also grateful to be more earthbound.

If he'd been working in the field, so to speak, he could have swung by
Gloria's for lunch. Any of the voices he heard that morning included
conversation about sandwiches for workers. Someone mentioned feta and
sun dried tomatoes on ciabata. Maybe they could bring him back a few.
(Fisherman's pants! his mind half shouted at him, but the vision of an
ample lunch refused to shrink.)

The other half of his mind had begun to fill with music, all of it
decades out of date, all of which he had danced to, sometimes with
enthusiasm, sometimes with a detachment he hoped seemed cool. Shuffled
in among best loved oldies were the few songs he'd overheard Gloria
singing in her kitchen. Folk songs in a sweet voice that made him think
of a mandolin and girls with long, straight hair who had, once upon a
time, laughed, it seemed, from the soles of their not-quite-clean feet,
only knew how to cook spaghetti and didn't complain. He remembered they
had each grown dreamy from the smell of his porch-dried chambray shirt
and shampooed hair.

Good thing they hadn't assigned him power tools today, Robert thought.
Saws, drills and their ilk in combination with ladders. He had
sidestepped into his time machine, the state of suspended disbelief
discovered in childhood where now became any time he wished,
either with clear memory or soaring imagination. He knew from
experience it would be a jolting re-entry to find himself back behind
the cash register, his youthful wonder boy self disguised as a man of
increasing years.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

The bite-size buffet worked before, Gloria knew, but not a
serve-yourself free-for-all. There would need to be servers,
sharp-eyed servers, and a way for guests to feel abundance and not lack
as they carried their treat-filled plates to a table beneath the strings
of fairy lights. She talked to all the other restaurant owners and
volunteer chefs in town, a menu was set, commitments made, watches
synchronized. She scanned the tearoom to see which of her most reliable
helpers was already present, which would need to be called. After a
quick inventory of supplies on hand, she started the first batch of
cookies.

She was of two minds about how she wished she could spend the day. What
a luxury to be a girl again, all dreamy and a'swirl in tulle and silk,
trying on gowns, party dresses, nearly hypnotized by anticipation and
her youthful image in the dressing table mirror. Truth was, she was as
enamored of preparing her treats as she had once been of, as she called
it, sashaying about, fussing with her hair, writing some boy's name over
and over in a notebook, wishing for things she couldn't actually name
but felt she would recognize when they arrived.

Work was a tonic, a cure-all, even when no actual ailment was present.
She was not moonstruck, not adolescent and definitely not confused. No,
she amended. She WAS moonstruck and with good reason. It was rare in
what she knew of the world to be so aware of another's essential self as
she was of Robert's, without having been told. Gloria believed we
possess aspects that never lie to us, that simply receive what is true
and allow it to flow freely, a stream returned to life with the first
snow melt. Though this was a new experience, she could trust it. She
wondered if she ought to rethink trusting the townsfolk not to serve
themselves too generously at a buffet. The answer to that was not yet
clear.

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About Me

“i want to think
again of dangerous
and noble things.
I want to be light
and frolicsome.
i want to be improbable
beautiful and
afraid of nothing
as though I had
WINGS.”
-- Mary Oliver
"The whole of life lies in the verb seeing."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1881 - 1955)